In his State of the Union address to Congress, President Trump exaggerated the benefits of the Republican tax cut bill to average Americans, overlooked the harm that will result from his push to weaken public health and worker safety protections, and disregarded the serious concerns expressed about key elements of his forthcoming infrastructure proposal.

Meanwhile, he failed to even mention a host of other issues where actions being taken by his administration are threatening the health and well-being of all Americans, including the assault on science-based policymaking at federal agencies, the dismantling of strategies to limit and respond to the mounting impacts of climate change, and the dangerous changes being considered to US nuclear weapons policy that would make nuclear war more likely.

Of course, President Trump’s words and actions have contributed to a number of other disturbing trends, including increased expressions of bigotry and racism, a lack of kindness and common decency, growing disrespect for facts and expertise, and a focus on short-term gain for the powerful and wealthy at the expense of longer-term investments for the public benefit. UCS president Ken Kimmell has more to say about that.

Trump’s tax cuts: largesse for the most fortunate endangers benefits for the rest of us

President Trump waxed eloquent last night about the tax cuts he signed into law in December, whose benefits go overwhelmingly to corporations and the wealthiest Americans. While the jury is out on how much of this windfall may eventually trickle down to middle- and working-class Americans, the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the tax cuts will increase the federal deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next decade. This will increase pressure for cuts in Medicaid, Medicare, food assistance, and other programs that benefit low- and middle-income families, along with reduced investments in scientific and medical research, education and job training, infrastructure, and other public goods.

Federal government investments in science research and innovation have led to discoveries that have produced major benefits for our health, safety, economic competitiveness, and quality of life. This includes MRI technology, vaccines and new medical treatments, the internet and GPS, earth-monitoring satellites that allow us to predict the path of major hurricanes, clean energy technologies such as LED lighting, advanced wind turbines and photovoltaic cells, and so much more. The work of numerous federal agencies to develop/implement public health and safety protections against exposure to toxic chemicals, air and water pollution, and workplace injuries has also produced real benefits to the American people.

While these cuts have yet to come to fruition (in large part because Congress has been unable to agree on anything other than very short-term spending bills), indications are that President Trump intends to put many of them forward again when he unveils his FY19 budget as early as February 12. The higher deficits resulting from the tax bill will almost certainly be cited by some in Congress as a reason to make these cuts.

“Regulatory rollbacks” = less protection for all Americans

Last night, President Trump touted his success in rolling back a number of science-based safeguards, claiming that “we have eliminated more regulations in our first year than any administration in history.” While there’s no doubt his administration has been hyperactive on this front, there’s also no doubt who benefits from slashing protections for workers and average Americans: the banks, chemical companies, coal and oil producers, and other corporations whose harmful behaviors led to the regulations in the first place.

At a White House photo op event last month heralding his push for deregulation, President Trump announced that he has canceled or delayed more than 1,500 planned regulatory actions, “more than any previous president, by far,” and said “we’re going to cut a ribbon because we’re getting back below the 1960 level and we’ll be there fairly quickly.” Of course, not everything was hunky-dory back then, as UCS senior writer Elliott Negin reminds us: “smog in major US cities was so thick it blocked the sun. Rivers ran brown with raw sewage and toxic chemicals. Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River and at least two other urban waterways were so polluted they caught on fire. Lead-laced paint and gasoline poisoned children, damaging their brains and nervous systems. Cars without seatbelts, air bags, or safety glass were unsafe at any speed. And hazardous working conditions killed an average of 14,000 workers annually, nearly three times the number today.”

At the White House event last month, President Trump assured us that “We want to protect our workers, our safety, our health, and we want to protect our water, we want to protect our air, and our country’s natural beauty.” But as my colleague Yogin Kothari points out, it is the very regulations that President Trump and his appointees are assailing “that keep our air and water clean, our food safer to eat, our household products and our kids’ toys safer to play with, and our workers safer at work. And it is these regulations that can and should have the greatest positive impact on low-income communities and communities of color, who are often disadvantaged and facing some of the worst public health and environmental threats.”

Infrastructure: the devil is in the details

Last night, President Trump said “I am calling on the Congress to produce a bill that generates at least $1.5 trillion for the new infrastructure investment we need,” and White House officials have signaled that he will be putting forward a detailed infrastructure proposal to Congress within the next few weeks. The need for a robust and equitable infrastructure package has never been greater; in its latest comprehensive assessment of the nation’s infrastructure conditions and needs, the American Society of Civil Engineers says that to bring our infrastructure up to a B grade from its current D grade, we need to invest $4.6 trillion by 2025 – some $2 trillion more than the estimated funding now in place.

At first blush, President Trump’s promised infrastructure plan may sound like it’s responsive to that need; but a closer look reveals serious concerns. A White House memo leaked last week indicates that only about 20 percent of these funds would be direct federal investment, with the rest needing to come from state and local governments and private sector investment. Even worse, a White House adviser told the US Conference of Mayors last week that the federal share of the funds would be offset by cuts to existing programs such as Amtrak and mass transit (talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul!).

Another leaked memo indicates the Trump administration will seek radical changes in environmental and other permitting procedures for new infrastructure projects, falsely claiming that these procedures—rather than the investment shortfalls noted above—are the source of the woeful state of our nation’s infrastructure. Scott Slesinger of NRDC charges that “the leaked provision would repeal critical clean air, clean water and endangered species protections and undermine basic environmental statutes. It would also set up a process guaranteed to neuter public input into federal actions and give agency heads free reign to virtually exempt any project from the National Environmental Policy Act, free from court challenge.”

While the leaked White House memos raise serious concerns, it is Congress that will determine the final shape and scale of any infrastructure bill. As my colleague Rob Cowin notes, any infrastructure bill must go beyond traditional investments in highways, bridges, and water projects, by seeking to ensure that our nation’s infrastructure is made increasingly resilient to the worsening impacts of climate change, as well as accelerating deployment of renewable energy, energy storage, and smart grid technologies that can enhance electricity system resiliency, while creating jobs and reducing environmental impacts. An infrastructure package that neglects these vital priorities, cuts other worthy programs to fund new investments, or attempts to gut important environmental review safeguards is not worth supporting.

President Trump’s assault on science and federal agency scientists

The importance of science to American prosperity, well-being, and international leadership went unmentioned in Trump State of the Union address. This is unsurprising, as President Trump’s administration and the 115th Congress have been actively dismantling science-based health and safety protections, sidelining scientific evidence, and undoing recent progress on scientific integrity. More than a year after taking office, President Trump has failed to appoint a presidential science advisor, and three-quarters of the key science and technology positions across the government also remain unfilled.

UCS’s Center for Science and Democracy maintains a running list of Trump administration attacks on science—disappearing data, silenced scientists, and other assaults on scientific integrity and science-based policy. Among them:

A ban on employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from using the words “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” and “science-based” in documents being prepared for next year’s budget.

Attacks by EPA administrator Scott Pruitt on the independence of EPA’s scientific advisory committees, by ordering that no scientists receiving EPA grant funding could serve on EPA’s Science Advisory Board, Board of Scientific Counselors, or Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee. (UCS and Protect Democracy have teamed up to challenge this directive in court).

Unfortunately, these are but a few examples of the administration’s abuses of science—and federal agency scientists—since President Trump took office, and new ones seem to come to light each month. These actions are doing long-term damage to the capability of these agencies to fulfill their mission, and causing real harm to public health and safety; it’s no wonder the president doesn’t want to talk about them.

Ignoring the climate crisis

Despite his brief shout-out to “everyone still recovering in Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, California, and everywhere else” from the damages caused by last year’s extreme weather events, President Trump continued to ignore the role of human-induced climate change in worsening those impacts. A federal government report outlines how the costs of these and other natural disasters exceeded $300 billion last year, setting a new US record that blew past previous totals. President Trump’s omission of these facts is not surprising, as he and his administration have been working overtime to dismantle federal government strategies to limit and respond to the mounting impacts of climate change.

Ignoring the advice of other world leaders, the CEOs of hundreds of major corporations, Pope Francis, and many other important voices, President Trump last June announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the historic Paris Agreement on climate change, jeopardizing the health and prosperity of every American as well as people all over the world. Fortunately, not one country has indicated that they will follow President Trump out the door; in fact, during last November’s climate summit in Germany, Syria announced that it intended to join all the other countries of the world in the agreement, rather than be lumped in with the United States as a climate scofflaw. And the ‘We Are Still In’ coalition of US states, cities, businesses, and other sub-national actors was at the climate summit in full force, unveiling America’s Pledge, committing to meet the US Paris Agreement emissions reduction goals despite the irresponsible and short-sighted actions of President Trump and his administration.

On the domestic front, the Trump administration has systematically moved to roll back President Obama’s climate action plan, including by repealing the Clean Power Plan, announcing a review of the highly successful clean car standards, and undercutting the agreement reached in 2016 with Canada and Mexico to sharply cut oil and gas sector methane emissions. What do these actions have in common? They all put the short-term economic interests of favored corporate interests ahead of the health, security, and prosperity of the American people. While these and other harmful actions are being challenged in court and are being partially offset by the leadership of US states, cities, and businesses, they will make it more difficult to meet the ambitious temperature limitation goals in the Paris Agreement, and are harming America’s reputation across the world.

Increasing the threat of nuclear war

Finally, while President Trump made extensive remarks last night about the security risks posed by North Korea and Iran’s nuclear weapons programs, he failed to mention that his administration is poised to revise America’s nuclear weapons policy in ways that would intentionally lower the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons. As my colleague Lisbeth Gronlund notes, “Every US president since the end of the Cold War has explicitly reduced the role, the types and the number of US nuclear weapons. This leaked draft lays out a policy that does exactly the opposite. It would increase the risk of nuclear use and reduce national security.”

The yawning gap between rhetoric and reality

So there you have it. While President Trump called for American pride and unity in his State of the Union address, and claimed his actions are bolstering our nation’s security and prosperity, there is a yawning gap between the rhetoric and the reality.

One year in to his administration, the damage being done is clear. But like my colleague Rachel Cleetus, I see grounds for hope as well – not only on the issues discussed above, but in the growing resistance to the threats this administration poses to our democracy, our values, and our basic human rights.

The Fijian COP23 presidency placed this sea-faring canoe outside of the main plenary hall in Bonn, symbolizing that when it comes to climate change, we are all in the same boat. Photo: By the author.

As the 23rd meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP23) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—or the annual UN climate talks—opened in Bonn, Germany on November 6, the urgency for much greater action on climate change could not have been more clear. Just two days earlier, Typhoon Damrey barreled into Vietnam, resulting in 69 deaths and nearly $1 billion in damages. The storm was the worst to hit the southern coastal region of Vietnam in decades, and came on the heels of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, which devastated communities in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, and several Caribbean islands; as well as raging forest fires in western North America and Brazil; heatwaves in Europe; and floods in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal.

The week before COP23 started, the United Nations Environment Program released its annual Emissions Gap Report, which found that the global warming emission reduction commitments put forward by countries under the Paris Agreement “cover only approximately one-third of the emissions reductions needed to be on a least cost pathway for the goal of staying well below 2°C.”

The report said that current commitments make a temperature increase of at least 3oC above pre-industrial levels by 2100 very likely, and if this emissions gap is not closed by 2030, it is extremely unlikely that the goal of holding global warming to well below 2°C can still be reached. The report’s warning was reinforced by analysis released by the Global Carbon Project during the talks, projecting that after three years in which global CO2 emissions have remained flat, they are likely to increase by 2% in 2017.

The UNEP report contains good news as well, outlining practical ways to slash emissions in the agriculture, buildings, energy, forestry, industry and transport sectors, along with actions to control hydrofluorocarbons and other high-potency greenhouse gases. The report finds that nominal investments in these sectors could help to avoid up to 36 GtCO2e per year by 2030. Almost two-thirds of this potential is from investment in solar and wind energy, efficient appliances, efficient passenger cars, afforestation and stopping deforestation — actions which have modest or net-negative costs; these savings alone would put the world well on track to hitting the 2oC target.

In the context of these risks and opportunities, the progress made at COP23 was far too modest compared to what is needed. But negotiators did succeed in laying the groundwork for more substantial achievements down the road, and the fact that countries pushed ahead despite President Trump’s announced intention to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement is in itself a welcome accomplishment.

Getting the rules right

A major focus of the negotiations in Bonn was on hammering out the detailed rules (or “implementation guidelines”) for the Paris Agreement, on a range of issues including transparency and reporting, accounting standards for both emissions and finance, the new market mechanisms created in the agreement that would allow reductions achieved in one country to be credited against another country’s emissions reduction commitments, how to raise the ambition of national actions over time, and actions needed to cope with the mounting impacts of climate change.

Countries had set a goal in Paris of resolving these and other implementation issues at the 2018 climate summit in Poland next December, so there was no expectation of final agreements on any of these issues at COP23. Rather, the objective at COP23 was to narrow the differences amongst countries and to clearly frame the options on the key issues involved, so as to facilitate their resolution next year.

Progress was made across the range of rulebook topics, but it was uneven. A bright spot was on the sensitive issue of transparency and reporting, where differences were narrowed and a fairly clear set of options was laid out.

By contrast, the negotiations on “features” of the “nationally-determined contributions” that countries are required to put forward under the Paris Agreement, as well as accounting standards for these NDCs and the up-front information requirements to ensure their “clarity, transparency, and understanding,” were much more polarized, and the end result was an unwieldy 179-page list of issues and options.

The most charged discussions were around finance, specifically the requirement in Article 9.5 of the Paris Agreement, that every two years developed countries must provide “indicative quantitative and qualitative information” on their future support for developing countries, including, “as available, projected levels of public financial resources to be provided.” The African Group of countries pushed for more clarity and detail on this projected financial support by developed countries for developing country actions, a move that was strongly opposed by the U.S. and other developed countries.

Developing countries want greater certainty of the financial resources available to them going forward, so they can plan projects accordingly; but developed countries are loathe to make multi-year commitments that they can be held accountable for. This issue will be revisited at the intersessional meeting in Bonn next spring, and then brought to ministers at COP24 in Poland in December, 2018.

We left Bonn not with the draft negotiating text on the Paris rules that some had hoped for, but instead with a set of “informal notes” produced by the co-facilitators of each of the working groups, which capture and organize the proposals put forward by countries. Much work lies ahead to meet the goal of adopting the full Paris rulebook at COP24, and while negotiators can work out some of the technical details in advance, it will clearly be up to ministers to resolve the political differences on the major crunch issues.

Catalyzing higher ambition

The decision adopted in Paris explicitly acknowledged the substantial shortfall in collective ambition that could keep the world from meeting the aggressive temperature limitation goals embodied in the Paris Agreement, and called for a “facilitative dialogue” at COP24 next year to address ways to close this gap. Working with last year’s Moroccan COP22 presidency, Fiji put forward its vision of how this process should be conducted, renaming it the “Talanoa dialogue.” As Fiji explains, “Talanoa is a traditional approach used in Fiji and the Pacific to engage in an inclusive, participatory and transparent dialogue; the purpose of Talanoa is to share stories, build empathy and trust.”

This will be a year-long process consisting of a preparatory phase starting in early 2018 and a political phase involving ministers at next year’s climate summit in Poland. The dialogue will be structured around three key questions: “Where are we? Where do we want to go? and How do we get there?” One major input will be the Special Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change examining the impacts of global warming of 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, scheduled for completion next October. Additional analytical and policy-relevant inputs will be welcomed in the preparatory phase, not just from countries but from NGOs, businesses, research institutions, and other stakeholders as well.

To succeed, this process must do more than reaffirm the ambition gap; it must spur concrete steps to close it. A central focus will be on the need for countries to signal, by 2020, their intention to raise the ambition of their existing commitments between now and 2030. But the dialogue should also examine how states, cities, businesses and other “non-state actors” can contribute to closing the ambition gap, and encourage a range of sectoral initiatives on renewable energy, energy efficiency, forestry and agricultural sectors solutions, carbon pricing and other areas.

The Talanoa dialogue process will be jointly led by Fiji and Poland, as the current and incoming COP presidencies. Given Poland’s heavy dependence on coal-generated electricity, there are legitimate concerns about that government’s interest in generating the specific outcomes from the dialogue needed to enhance ambition. It is clearly up to all countries to ensure the dialogue stays on track and produces meaningful results.

Dealing with climate impacts

Even if we are able to close the emissions gap and hold temperature increases well below 2 degrees Celsius, as leaders committed to in Paris, the world is going to suffer increasing climate impacts over the next several decades, as a result of the emissions we have already put up in the atmosphere. Developing countries, together with environmental and development NGOs, pushed in Bonn for faster progress on helping vulnerable countries and affected communities cope with these impacts, both through enhanced measures to adapt to current and future impacts, as well as strategies to deal with the now-unavoidable “loss and damage” they are facing, both from “slow-onset” impacts such as sea level rise and desertification, and from typhoons, hurricanes, floods, and other extreme events. At COP19 in Poland in 2013, countries established the Warsaw Implementation Mechanism on Loss and Damage (or “WIM”), and explicit provisions on loss and damage were included in the Paris Agreement.

Sadly, not enough was accomplished in Bonn on this front. Five European countries did pledge a total of $185 million of renewed support for the Adaptation Fund and the Least Developed Countries Fund. But developed countries blocked a push by vulnerable countries to make the issue of mobilizing the much greater level of financial resources to deal with loss and damage a standing agenda item at future negotiating sessions. All they would agree to is to hold an “expert dialogue” on this issue at next spring’s subsidiary body meetings in Bonn, which in turn will inform technical analysis on financial resource mobilization for loss and damage activities that is already being undertaken by the WIM.

Expect this issue to continue to be a major topic of debate in the negotiations going forward, including at COP25 in late 2019, where countries have agreed to conduct a full-blown review of the WIM.

The elephant in the room

When President Trump announced in June of this year his intention to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, there was widespread condemnation from other countries, as well as from business and civil society both in the United States and around the world. Not one country indicated that they intended to follow President Trump out the door; in fact, during the first week of the Bonn climate summit, the only other Paris Agreement holdout, Syria, announced that it intended to join all the other countries of the world in the agreement, rather than be lumped in with the United States as a climate scofflaw.

The U.S. negotiating team in Bonn kept a low profile, hewing largely to past positions on issues like transparency and reporting for developing countries and robust accounting standards. They were quite tough in the negotiations on climate finance and loss and damage, though, perhaps out of concern that any sign of flexibility risked an unhelpful response from the Tweeter-in-Chief.

White House staff organized a side event on the role of coal, nuclear, and gas technologies as climate solutions, which generated a well-organized and creative protest led by U.S. youth groups. It was also overshadowed by the launch of the Powering Past Coal Alliance, a coalition of 20 countries led by Canada and the United Kingdom that is committed to phasing out use of coal no later than 2030.

California Governor Jerry Brown, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and other officials at the Nov. 11th launch of America’s Pledge at the U.S. Climate Action Center in Bonn. Photo: By the author.

But the real energy at the Bonn climate summit came from the We Are Still In initiative of university presidents, mayors, governors, business leaders, and NGOs who showcased their steps to reduce climate pollution and pledged their intention to meet America’s emissions reduction commitments under Paris, regardless of President Trump’s efforts to dismantle federal leadership on climate policy.

Through an intensive schedule of side events, press briefings, and bilateral meetings with ministers and business leaders from other countries, this U.S. subnational delegation went a long way to assuring the rest of the world that President Trump represents a short-term deviation in U.S. policy, not a long-term trend. Of course, until there is a clear demonstration of bipartisan political support at the federal level for climate action, other countries will understandably continue to harbor concerns about the reliability of the United States as a partner in this endeavor.

What lies ahead

Negotiators will reconvene in Bonn on April 30 for a two-week session of the UNFCCC’s subsidiary bodies, working to make progress across the range of issues to be decided at COP24 in Katowice, Poland next December, and Fiji and Poland will convene several informal ministerial discussions over the course of 2018 focusing on the key political decisions that must be reached at COP24.

There are a number of other events where ministers and even heads of state will be discussing ways to enhance climate action over the next year, including:

The One Planet Summit being convened by French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, with a focus on mobilizing increased public and private sector climate finance.

Two more sessions of the Ministerial Meeting on Climate Action (MOCA), a dialogue launched by Canada, China, and the European Union in Montreal in September; the next meeting will be hosted by the EU next spring, followed by a meeting hosted by China next fall.

The ninth meeting of the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, a ministerial-level discussion to be co-hosted in mid-2018 by Germany and Poland, as the incoming presidency of the Conference of the Parties.

The G7 leaders’ summit, to be hosted by Canada on June 8th and 9th

The Global Climate Action Summit being hosted in San Francisco next September by Gov. Jerry Brown, which will bring together national, state and local political leaders, businesses, scientists, non-profits and others to “showcase the surge of climate action around the world – and make the case that even more needs to be done.”

The G20 leaders’ summit, hosted by Argentina and starting just two days before COP 24, on November 30th. Leaders should build on the Climate and Energy Action Plan adopted at the G20 summit last July under the German presidency, which was agreed to by all G20 countries except for the United States.

All of these events can – and must – contribute to accelerated progress at COP24 in Katowice and beyond in implementing and strengthening the Paris Agreement. As the UNEP report and other analyses clearly show, we have the solutions we need to the crisis we face. But what we need now is a much greater level of political will.

By the end of this week, the Senate is expected to vote on the tax cut bill reported out of the Senate Finance Committee earlier this month. Changes in the bill will likely be made right up to the end, as Republican leaders struggle to secure the 50 votes needed to approve the bill under budget “reconciliation” rules (normally, it takes 60 votes to move major bills through the Senate).

At least six Republican Senators are reported to have serious concerns about the bill, either because they fear it would add too much to the deficit or because it favors large corporations more than small business owners. If three or more of those Senators end up opposing the bill (and no Democrats break ranks and support it), the bill will die. For the reasons outlined below, it should.

Equity is in the eye of the campaign contributor

As was the case with the tax bill passed by the House on November 16th, there’s been a fierce debate over the distributional impacts of the Senate bill.

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center finds that if the bill becomes law, most taxpayers would see a reduction in their tax bills in the years out to 2025 – although the cuts would be heavily skewed towards the top 1 percent of the income distribution (households with more than $750,000 in annual income).

But this changes dramatically in 2026 and beyond, because of Senate Republicans’ decision to make the corporate tax cuts permanent while sunsetting the individual tax cut provisions after 2025 (they did this to comply with the prohibition on increasing the deficit after ten years when using the reconciliation process). As a result, by 2027, the TPC projects that some 50 percent of taxpayers would see an increase in their tax bills, while only 28 percent would still be getting a tax cut. And once again, the impacts would be skewed: for taxpayers with incomes in the top 0.1 percent of all Americans, less than 2 percent would see an increase in their taxes, while 98 percent would enjoy a tax cut averaging nearly $224,000 in 2027 alone.

The Senate bill also eliminates the tax penalty that individuals who choose not to purchase health insurance must pay under the Affordable Care Act, in order to achieve deficit reductions that can be used to offset the cost of the permanent reductions in corporate tax rates.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates this will reduce the deficit by $338 billion over the next ten years, as the number of Americans with health insurance would decrease by 13 million by 2027, reducing government outlays both for Medicaid and for subsidies for individuals purchasing health insurance in the ACA’s marketplace. Meanwhile, health care premiums would increase by 10 percent for individuals in the non-group marketplace, compared to the baseline.

This is Robin Hood in reverse – robbing the poor to pay the rich – and represents yet another effort to dismantle the Affordable Care Act without putting anything credible in its place to deal with the health care needs of millions of Americans.

Deficit, schmeficit

Some Republicans have claimed that the Senate’s tax cuts will largely pay for themselves as a result of higher economic growth rates. But analysis using a highly-respected economic model estimates the Senate bill would increase the deficit by some $1.4 – 1.6 trillion over the next ten years; this closely tracks the $1.4 trillion deficit increase estimate by the official Congressional scorekeeper, the Joint Committee on Taxation. And of course, these estimates assume that Congress allows the individual tax cuts to expire after ten years, allows the generous business deduction for investments in factories and equipment to expire after five years, and allows other tax increases scheduled to take effect in 2026 to stand. If (as is more than likely) those provisions were to be reversed by a future Congress and President, the resulting deficit would swell further, creating even greater pressure for cuts in Medicaid, Medicare, food assistance, and other programs that benefit low- and middle-income families, along with reduced investments in scientific and medical research, education and job training, infrastructure, and other public goods.

As I’ve noted previously, federal government investments in science research and innovation have led to discoveries that have produced major benefits for our health, safety, economic competitiveness, and quality of life. This includes MRI technology, vaccines and new medical treatments, the internet and GPS, earth-monitoring satellites that allow us to predict the path of major hurricanes, clean energy technologies such as LED lighting, advanced wind turbines and photovoltaic cells, and so much more.

The work of numerous federal agencies to develop and implement public and worker health and safety protections against exposure to toxic chemicals, air and water pollution, workplace injuries, and many other dangers has also produced real benefits. All of these programs (along with veterans’ care, homeland security, transportation and other infrastructure, law enforcement, education, and many other core government programs) fall within the non-defense discretionary (or NDD) portion of federal spending, which has been disproportionately targeted for spending cuts over the last decade. As an analysis by Paul Van de Water of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities points out, “NDD spending in 2017 will be about 13 percent below the comparable 2010 level after adjusting for inflation (nearly $100 billion lower in 2017 dollars).”

The aging of the American population, continued increases in health care costs, the need to replace crumbling infrastructure and pay billions to help communities devastated by hurricanes and wildfires, and other factors will drive a substantial increase in federal spending over the next few decades.

One estimate is that federal spending will need to grow from 20.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to 23.5 percent of GDP by 2035, largely as a result of increased costs for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. In order to keep the national debt from growing faster than the overall economy, federal revenues will need to increase from some 17.8 percent of GDP in 2016 to at least 20.5 percent in 2035.

The need to increase spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, along with pressure to maintain (or increase) defense spending, will continue to squeeze NDD expenditures in the years ahead, even without the higher deficits created by the Senate Republican tax cut bill.

The game plan is clear as can be: pass massive tax cuts that add hundreds of billions of dollars each year to the deficit, then starting next year, use those higher deficits as an excuse for slashing programs that benefit middle- and lower-income Americans.

There’s a better way

The outcome of this week’s Senate action on the tax bill will not only determine whose tax bills will go down (or up) and by how much, important as that is; it will also impact America’s ability to maintain our global leadership on scientific and medical research and technology innovation, improve our air and water quality, avert the worst impacts of climate change (and cope with the impacts we can’t avoid), upgrade our transportation, energy, and communications infrastructure, and make investments in other critical areas.

Senators face a momentous choice. They must refrain from handing out trillions of dollars in tax breaks to profitable corporations and the wealthiest Americans, while eroding health care coverage and laying the groundwork for deep cuts in a broad range of important federal programs down the road. Instead, they should start over, and work across the aisle to craft a real tax reform plan that clears away the dense thicket of special interest loopholes and simplifies the tax code in a way that’s equitable to all Americans, without exploding the deficit and endangering the ability of the federal government to meet America’s current and future needs.

We know it’s possible to legislate in such a responsible, bipartisan manner; after all, it’s happened before.

In the days since the “Big Six” group of Congressional leaders and Trump administration officials unveiled the outlines of their tax “reform” proposal, there’s been a fierce debate—and rightly so—over who stands to win and who lose. Will the average working American get anything significant from this tax plan, or are most of the benefits skewed towards the wealthy and profitable corporations? More on this in a minute.

What’s gotten less attention is the impact of this plan on the public science enterprise and the well-being of all Americans.

An unprecedented assault

Federal government investments in science research and innovation have led to discoveries that have produced major benefits for our health, safety, economic competitiveness, and quality of life. This includes MRI technology, vaccines and new medical treatments, the internet and GPS, earth-monitoring satellites that allow us to predict the path of major hurricanes, clean energy technologies such as LED lighting, advanced wind turbines and photovoltaic cells, and so much more. The work of numerous federal agencies to develop and implement public and worker health and safety protections against exposure to toxic chemicals, air and water pollution, workplace injuries, and many other dangers has also produced real benefits.

UCS and our allies are pushing back hard on these proposed budget cuts, and we remain vigilant to ensure that when Congress takes final action on the FY18 appropriations bills in December, these irresponsible cuts will be rejected.

All these programs (along with veterans’ care, homeland security, transportation and other infrastructure, law enforcement, education, and many other core government programs) fall within the non-defense discretionary (or NDD) portion of federal spending, which has been disproportionately targeted for spending cuts over the last decade. As an analysis by Paul Van de Water of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities points out, “NDD spending in 2017 will be about 13 percent below the comparable 2010 level after adjusting for inflation (nearly $100 billion lower in 2017 dollars).”

Even if the draconian Trump budget cuts are beaten back, the very real need to increase spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, along with a push by many in Congress to maintain (or increase) defense spending, will continue to squeeze NDD expenditures in the years ahead.

Creating long-term pressure on essential programs

Here’s where the Republican tax plan comes in, as it will almost certainly reduce government revenues substantially and add to the national debt. While Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told ABC News that the tax plan would generate higher economic growth rates and “will cut the deficit by $1 trillion,” few independent economists agree with that rosy outlook.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the plan could increase the deficit by $2.2 trillion over the next decade; CRFB president Maya MacGuineas cautioned that “tax cuts shouldn’t be handed out like Halloween candy,” and said they “certainly don’t pay for themselves.”

Senate Republicans openly acknowledge that the tax plan will increase the deficit; the Budget Committee resolution that they plan to put before the full Senate for a vote later this month contains reconciliation instructions to the Finance Committee that would allow the deficit to increase “by not more than $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years.”

Deficit spending is sometimes justified, such as for investments in infrastructure, education, public health, and other forms of physical and human capital that more than pay back over time, or to kick-start the economy when unemployment is high. But that’s not the case here; as discussed below, the bulk of the benefits from this plan would flow to the wealthiest Americans, with low- and middle-income Americans receiving only modest direct benefits, if any.

Moreover, the resulting increase in the federal deficit would lead to louder calls for cuts in programs that benefit low- and middle-income Americans, including food assistance programs, student loans, unemployment insurance, economic development, and worker retraining. As another analysis by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities put it, “the majority of Americans could ultimately lose more from the program cuts than they would gain from the tax cuts.”

The government needs more revenue, not less

Looking down the road, it’s clear that the aging of the American population, continued increases in health care costs, the need to replace crumbling infrastructure, and other factors are creating pressure for federal spending to increase substantially over the next few decades.

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that to accommodate these factors, federal spending will need to grow from 20.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to 23.5 percent of GDP by 2035. This is largely driven by increased costs for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; CBPP projects that defense and non-defense discretionary spending will decrease somewhat as a share of GDP over the next couple of decades. As the CBPP report observes, the need to increase federal spending is “hardly a controversial notion. Budget plans from such diverse organizations as the National Academy of Sciences, the Bipartisan Policy Center, and the American Enterprise Institute have reached the same conclusion.”

To keep the national debt from growing faster than the overall economy, CBPP estimates that annual budget deficits need to be held to an average of 3 percent of GDP; this in turn means that federal revenues should increase from some 17.8 percent of GDP in 2016 to at least 20.5 percent in 2035. There are any number of ways to do this, from closing special interest loopholes in the tax code to putting a tax on carbon dioxide emissions or other forms of pollution. Of course, given the current political realities in Washington, no one expects a serious discussion of this issue anytime soon; the current challenge is just to avoid making the situation worse.

Tax fairness: the rhetoric and the reality

President Trump and Republican leaders insist that their aim is to provide tax relief for the middle class, and that taxes won’t be cut for wealthy Americans; President Trump even asserted that this tax plan is “not good for me. Believe me.”

But a preliminary analysis of the framework by the Tax Policy Center found otherwise. While acknowledging that several details remain to be filled in, TPC estimates that in 2018 under the “Big Six” plan, “taxpayer groups in the bottom 95 percent of the income distribution would see modest tax cuts, averaging 1.2 percent of after-tax income or less. The benefit would be largest for taxpayers in the top 1 percent (those making more than $730,000), who would see their after-tax income increase 8.5 percent.”

Over half of the total benefit of the tax cuts would accrue to taxpayers in the top 1 percent, increasing to nearly 80 percent of the benefits by 2027. Others have examined how the elimination of the alternative minimum tax, the abolition of the estate tax, and several other provisions of the plan would personally benefit President Trump—and his heirs.

Private interests vs. the public good

It’s clear that the stakes in the tax debate now under way in Washington are not just about the critical issue of whose tax bills go down (or up) and by how much. The outcome will also have an impact on our ability to maintain America’s global leadership on scientific and medical research and technology innovation, improve air and water quality, avert the worst impacts of climate change (and cope with the impacts we can’t avoid), upgrade our transportation, energy, and communications infrastructure, and many other important issues.

It’s hard to dispute the need for real tax reform—a plan that clears away the dense thicket of special interest loopholes and simplifies the tax code, in a way that’s equitable to all Americans. But that’s not what’s on offer right now—instead we’re seeing a drive to give trillions of dollars in handouts to profitable corporations and the wealthiest Americans, while laying the groundwork for deep cuts in a broad range of important federal programs down the road.

Our elected officials can – and should – do much better than this; if they’re unwilling to, they should observe the Hippocratic oath, and “first do no harm.”

When the Paris Agreement was adopted on December 12th, 2015, it was hailed as a triumph of multilateral diplomacy, offering real hope that the nations of the world could come to grips with the climate change crisis and leave our children and grandchildren with a habitable planet. While France’s superb team steered the Agreement through to completion, it was the ability of the United States and China to put aside their differences and the joint leadership of Presidents Obama and Xi at several key moments that was seen by many as the critical factor to the success of the negotiations.

Both of these presidents recognized that climate change poses a severe threat to the security and well-being of their citizens, and understood that effectively addressing this crisis is much less costly than coping with the mounting impacts of climate change.

In sharp contrast, President Trump’s announcement today that he intends to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement demonstrates that he comprehends exactly none of this. Ignoring the advice of other world leaders, the CEOs of hundreds of major corporations, Pope Francis, and many other important voices, President Trump took an action that jeopardizes the health and prosperity of every American as well as people all over the world.

Pulling out of Paris will diminish the standing of the United States in world affairs, and make it harder for other leaders to collaborate with President Trump on trade, terrorism, and other critical issues, as it reinforces the belief of an increasing number of their citizens that he cares not a whit for their interests and concerns.

And contrary to what President Trump says, his action today will do absolutely nothing to boost the economy or create jobs; instead, it will harm the ability of U.S. companies and workers to compete in the rapidly growing global market for climate-friendly technologies.

But the deed is done. Now attention turns to the impact of this irresponsible move on the future of the Paris Agreement and the overall drive to decarbonize the global economy as is needed to avert the worst impacts of climate change.

We’ll always have Paris—won’t we?

With his move today, President Trump puts the United States in elite company, joining Nicaragua and Syria as the only other nations of the world not supporting the Paris Agreement. There are no indications that any other country intends to follow President Trump out the door. In fact, just the opposite has occurred in recent weeks, as other countries have reacted firmly to President Trump’s rollbacks of domestic climate action and the prospect of US withdrawal from Paris.

Here are just some of the notable statements:

A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, Lu Kang: “No matter how other countries’ policies on climate change, as a responsible large developing country China’s resolve, aims and policy moves in dealing with climate change will not change.” And in a clear reference to President Trump’s infamous claim that climate change is a “hoax” made up by China, Premier Li Keqiang said this: “Fighting climate change is a global consensus, it’s not invented by China.”

Perhaps most eloquent was Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine, who said: “A President’s job is to protect their citizens, grow the economy and pave the way for future generations. Acting on climate change is the best way to do all of this. While we are extremely disappointed to see the United States seeking to roll back its efforts to reduce emissions, we are heartened to see the rest of the world remains firmly committed to the Paris Agreement and to reaping the enormous economic opportunities that come with it. My country’s survival depends on every country delivering on the promises they made in Paris—our own commitment to it will never waiver.”

As these comments make clear, other countries see fulfillment of the commitments they have made under the Paris Agreement as not just their responsibility to the global community, but as squarely in their own national interest. Developing country leaders understand that the mounting impacts of climate change endanger their ability to achieve their economic development objectives, and both developed and developing country leaders are eager to share in the massive economic and job creation opportunities created by the clean energy revolution.

Other countries did not sign up for the Paris Agreement to please the United States, and President Trump’s abdication of leadership will not cause them to leave it.

The geopolitical consequences of today’s action

When President George W. Bush announced in March, 2001 that the United States was abandoning the Kyoto Protocol, he and his foreign policy team didn’t anticipate how negatively the rest of the world would react. As his Secretary of State Colin Powell said two months later, “when the blowback came I think it was a sobering experience that everything the American president does has international repercussions.”

The blowback to President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement is likely to be even worse, given the much higher profile of the climate issue now compared to 2001, and the fact that some 120 world leaders participated in the opening high-level segment of the Paris climate conference in 2015.

As Nicholas Burns, deputy Secretary of State in the George W. Bush administration, said earlier this year, “I think it would be a major mistake, even a historic mistake, to disavow the Paris deal… I can’t think of an issue, except perhaps NATO, where if the U.S. simply walks away, it would have such a major negative impact on how we are seen.”

In a letter to EPA administrator Scott Pruitt earlier this month, Germany’s Environment Mnister Barbara Hendricks was quite direct about the consequences of today’s decision: “I am very concerned that a US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement would cause lasting damage to the long-standing mutual trust and close cooperation between our two countries and between the US and other countries in Europe and elsewhere,” she wrote.

As Todd Stern noted in a recent Washington Post op-ed, withdrawal from Paris should be seen as “an act of diplomatic malpractice. Countries large and small, rich and poor, are deeply invested in Paris because they understand the peril of climate change and know the Paris agreement cannot be truly effective without U.S. engagement.”

Stern predicted other countries “would see withdrawal as a slap in the face, disrespecting their fundamental interests and, in turn, eroding the United States’ diplomatic capital. This matters. In diplomacy, as in life, if you tell someone, ‘to hell with what you care about,’ don’t expect open arms when you come calling with your own needs.”

The repercussions of President Trump’s action today, which some are calling his “biggest middle finger to the world yet,” will only fully play out over the coming weeks and months. But it will clearly add to growing concerns about the ability of the United States to be a responsible actor on the international stage.

What comes next?

In Paris, countries set an aggressive temperature limitation goal of “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels,” and acknowledged that to meet this goal, countries must aim “to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century.”

They also explicitly acknowledged that the initial commitments put forward under the Paris Agreement fall well short of what’s needed to constrain temperature increases to below 2 degrees C, much less to avoid exceeding 1.5 degrees C, and they included provisions in the agreement to ratchet up their individual and collective level of effort over time, as needed to close that “ambition gap.”

As a next step, countries agreed to hold a “facilitative dialogue” at the climate summit that will take place in Poland at the end of next year, in order to “take stock of the collective efforts of Parties in relation to progress towards the long-term goal…and to inform the preparation of nationally determined contributions.” They also requested the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to prepare a special report on these issues to inform the dialogue.

The expectation was that by the end of this decade, countries that had taken on 2025 emissions reduction commitments under Paris, such as the United States, would put more ambitious 2030 commitments on the table. At the same time, China, India, the European Union and other countries that had made 2030 commitments would be expected to review those commitments and as appropriate, revise them upwards. It’s already clear that many of these countries are on track to overachieve their initial commitments, partly as a result of continuing dramatic reductions in the cost of solar, wind, and other clean energy technologies.

So the feasibility of increasing ambition is not in question; it’s a matter of political will.

But it’s also clear that President Trump is not going to come to his senses, rejoin the world in the Paris Agreement, and put a more ambitious US commitment on the table for 2030. It will be up to others—starting with China and the European Union—to put their own stronger commitments on the table and challenge others to join them. It should be noted that the 48 countries making up the Climate Vulnerability Forum have already set a high standard here, by committing themselves to achieve net carbon neutrality and obtaining 100% of their energy from renewable resources—despite the fact they have a lower level of economic development than most of the world’s major emitting countries.

In that regard, the EU-China summit being held today and tomorrow in Brussels represents a significant milestone in the shift in global leadership on this issue away from the United States. Reports are that European Council President Donald Tusk, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang will issue a joint statement tomorrow saying that “The increasing impacts of climate change require a decisive response,” and that “the EU and China consider climate action and the clean energy transition an imperative more important than ever.”

Translating those strong words into collective action—not just by the EU and China, but others as well—is essential if the Paris Agreement is to not just survive, but thrive, in the wake of the at least temporary withdrawal of the world’s largest economy and second largest emitter.

Back here in the land of the free and the home of the brave

President Trump’s action today flies in the face of public opinion; fully seven in 10 Americans support US participation in the Paris Agreement. Gallup’s tracking poll shows that concern about the global warming threat have reached an 8-year high; a majority of Americans say they are worried it will pose a serious risk to their way of life. And a recent Quinnipiac University poll found that 62 percent of people do not support President Trump’s policies to rollback action on climate change.

While there are partisan differences on these issues, polls show that 57% of Republican voters support US participation in the Paris Agreement and 55% of Trump voters support current policies on climate change. Another poll shows that Trump supporters overwhelmingly support renewable energy, with 84% supporting the further expansion of solar power in the US.

The business community also strongly supports climate action and the Paris Agreement. In the run-up to today’s announcement, more than 1000 American companies and investors with over $1.2 trillion in annual revenues signed a statement to President Trump urging him to stay in the Paris Agreement and to strengthen, not roll back, low-carbon policies at home to meet the US Paris commitment.

As former US Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern said in his recent Washington Post op-ed, “The reasons for this support are clear. Business leaders are fact-based. There is no room for ideological nonsense in the ‘C-suite.’ Whatever their political party, corporate executives get that climate change is real and most are actively planning business strategy to manage its consequences and limit their own emissions. They see Paris as a balanced agreement they can work with.”

He also notes that “corporate leaders understand that the transition to clean energy presents one of the biggest economic opportunities of this century, that climate change is a major driver of this transition and that the United States is perfectly positioned to lead it with our unmatched culture of innovation. They also know, conversely, that opting out on climate change will undermine this chance to create jobs and wealth.”

State and local leaders also support the Paris Agreement: Governors from twelve states accounting for one-third of the US population and nearly 40 percent of America’s GDP recently sent President Trump a letter urging him to stay in the Agreement, as did fourteen Attorneys General. Mayors from 75 cities representing over 41 million Americans wrote to the president, saying that “Climate change is both the greatest single threat we face, and our greatest economic opportunity for our nation. That is why we affirm our cities’ commitments to taking every action possible to achieve the principles and goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, and to engage states, businesses and other sectors to join us.”

These governors, mayors, and business leaders are doing much more than just sending letters to the president. They are making commitments to significantly cut or even eliminate emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, to get 100% of their electricity from renewable energy sources, to upgrade the resilience of their infrastructure and supply chains, and to take other actions to deal with the reality of climate change.

While it is deeply unfortunate that President Trump is trying to take the federal government in the opposite direction, his actions won’t cause these leaders to reverse course; if anything, his head-in-the-sand approach is leading many of them to step up even more forcefully on the issue. As my colleague Rachel Cleetus noted in her post earlier today, these actions, combined with the rapidly falling costs of renewable energy, mean that progress towards creating a US clean energy economy will continue, despite President Trump’s efforts to slow it down.

So there it is. While President Trump’s action today is misinformed, harmful to the real interests of Americans, and will do real damage to the standing of the US in the world, it will not derail the Paris Agreement, nor should it lessen the commitment of other countries, state and local leaders, companies, investors and others to take the actions needed to decarbonize the global economy and avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

]]>https://blog.ucsusa.org/alden-meyer/president-trumps-epic-fail-on-paris/feed1President Obama’s Final State of the Union: What to Expect, and What to Hope Forhttps://blog.ucsusa.org/alden-meyer/president-obamas-final-state-of-the-union
https://blog.ucsusa.org/alden-meyer/president-obamas-final-state-of-the-union#respondMon, 11 Jan 2016 16:18:25 +0000http://blog.ucsusa.org/?p=41037

In his final State of the Union speech tomorrow night, President Obama will certainly have a lot to say about the economy, terrorism, gun control, and health care. But he is also likely to address climate change, energy, and other issues that UCS works on more directly. Here’s a look on what he’s likely to say on these issues, as well as some things he should say about them, but may not.

A banner year on climate change

In last year’s State of the Union address, President Obama stated that “no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change,” and said he was “determined to make sure that American leadership drives international action.” By aggressively implementing his Climate Action Plan—especially EPA’s standards on the amount of carbon pollution that the nation’s power plants are allowed to dump into the atmosphere—and engaging in nonstop diplomacy with China, India, Brazil, and other key countries, the president and his team laid the groundwork for last month’s historic climate agreement in Paris. Expect President Obama to claim his share of the credit for this achievement, which blows a gaping hole in opponents’ arguments that other countries won’t join the United States if we take action on climate change. Also expect him to lay out the economic, environmental, and security benefits of such action, and to commit to keep working for additional progress on this critical issue until his last day in office. Not only is this the right thing to do; it also is good politics, as the American public—including a majority of Republicans—strongly supports regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

President Obama may well mention Mission Innovation, the commitment announced in Paris by the United States and 19 other countries to double the level of government investment in clean energy technology R&D over the next five years, and call for bipartisan support for this initiative. He may acknowledge the extension of the investment tax credit and production tax credit provisions for solar, wind, and other renewable sources in the comprehensive tax bill passed by Congress last month, and how this will continue the rapid increase in electricity production these clean energy resources have experienced since he took office in 2009.

President Obama may also highlight the need for climate justice and equity to be key components of efforts to build resilience in communities on the frontlines of climate change, and put in a plug for his solar access initiative, which seeks to ensure that disadvantaged communities enjoy full access to clean, renewable forms of energy and benefit from the rapid growth of clean energy jobs.

Clean vehicles and fuels: good progress, and more to come

The increasing fuel efficiency of our vehicle fleet is a major contributor to recent reductions in oil and gasoline prices; the president was part of a bipartisan group of Senators who helped pass historic legislation in 2007 that increased the federal corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards for light-duty vehicles for the first time in 20 years, and he built on that success during his first term as president by adopting even more ambitious standards for new light-duty vehicles out to 2025. He now needs to ensure that the analysis and technology assessments that his agencies use as they prepare for next year’s mid-term evaluation of these standards is based on the best information and science. That will allow the next administration to have the best data in hand when assessing how to keep the 2025 standards strong.

In his 2014 State of the Union address, the president committed to keep working to improve vehicle efficiency, “by setting new standards for our trucks, so we can keep driving down oil imports and what we pay at the pump.” This spring, the Obama administration is set to finalize these standards to increase fuel efficiency in our heavy-duty trucks, which make up less than 7% of cars on the road but use over 25% of our oil. While strong, the administration’s proposed standards could still be improved, according to UCS analysis. Stronger standards would require a 40 percent reduction in fuel consumption by 2025—a technically feasible and cost-effective target that, when compared to the current proposal, would save more fuel, and sooner. When final, these standards will be another major component of the comprehensive strategy that’s needed to cut our oil use in half through efficiency and innovation, reducing the problems oil causes our economy, our security, our environment, and our climate.

President Obama also can and should do more to address the supply side of the equation. For the fact is that unnecessary leaking, venting, and flaring of methane dramatically increases the greenhouse gas emissions associated with extracting, refining, and producing a barrel of oil. The Obama administration has already proposed regulations to address methane leaks from new and modified oil and gas production; tomorrow night, the president should announce that not only will he finalize those standards, but that he will also move to set standards for existing drilling sites before he leaves office next year.

Grounds for caution on natural gas

As he has in previous State of the Union addresses, President Obama may refer to the nation’s expanding production and use of natural gas as a benefit to our economy and environment. It’s true that substituting natural gas for coal in electricity production can help reduce carbon pollution in the near-term, though just as with oil, there are fugitive methane emissions from gas production and use, which if large enough, could overwhelm these carbon benefits. But ultimately, we need to virtually eliminate carbon pollution from all sources—including natural gas—if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

An overreliance on natural gas over the long-term won’t allow us to achieve the emissions reductions needed to address global warming, and could crowd out essential investments in renewable energy sources and improving energy efficiency. Also, as UCS’s toolkit on fracking makes clear, too many communities are being pressed to make decisions on new oil and gas production projects without access to comprehensive and reliable scientific information about the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on their local air and water quality, community health, safety, economy, environment, and overall quality of life. President Obama should pledge that the federal government will take a stronger role in protecting these communities, and work with states to strengthen regulation and oversight of these industries.

Protecting the government’s ability to protect us

Just last week, the House passed H.R. 1155, the Searching for and Cutting Regulations that are Unnecessarily Burdensome (or “SCRUB”) Act, which as the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards points out, “would establish a new bureaucracy empowered to dismantle long-established public health and safety standards and would make it significantly more difficult for Congress and federal agencies to implement essential future protections.” Fortunately, the White House has already issued a veto threat for this ill-conceived legislation, should it ever reach the president’s desk. But this isn’t the first bad idea on “reforming” the federal regulatory process to be put forward by the current Congress, and it almost certainly won’t be the last. President Obama should make it crystal clear tomorrow night that he will continue to stand up to these efforts of special interests and their allies in Congress to undermine the ability of the federal government to protect the public’s health and safety.

There is also more that President Obama can do on his own on this front. For example, in 2013, he issued an Executive Order to improve chemical facility safety and security, but as my colleague Gretchen Goldman points out, the rules that provide better information for communities and protections against the risks of chemical accidents—the EPA’s so-called Risk Management Plan—are woefully out of date. The president should ensure these rules are updated before he leaves office.

Needed: a National Food Policy

While the president may once again refer to First Lady Michelle Obama’s campaign against childhood obesity, it’s unlikely he will address the disconnect between health and nutrition policies, on the one hand, and our national agricultural policy on the other. As UCS Food and Environment program director Ricardo Salvador and three colleagues put it in a November, 2014 Washington Post op-ed:

How we produce and consume food has a bigger impact on Americans’ well-being than any other human activity. The food industry is the largest sector of our economy; food touches everything from our health to the environment, climate change, economic inequality and the federal budget. Yet we have no food policy — no plan or agreed-upon principles — for managing American agriculture or the food system as a whole.

While an executive order to establish a national policy for food, health, and well-being is likely a bridge too far in the president’s final year, the lack of a national food policy needs to be an issue in this year’s presidential campaign.

In the meantime, President Obama should make clear that he will defend healthy and sustainable food and farm policies in 2016, which will likely see the passage of at least one major food bill, the Child Nutrition Reauthorization (CNR) Act. CNR sets nutrition standards and funding levels for school lunch and breakfast programs, and authorizes the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Program, which provides food assistance to low-income families. It also authorizes the Farm to School program, which has been instrumental in connecting local and regional farmers with schools, providing a win for farmers and schools alike. President Obama can use his veto power to ensure that a CNR bill delivers healthy, affordable food for those who need it most. Additionally, he can ensure that any other food and agriculture legislation or federal rules are developed using sound science in order to protect our water, air, and soil, and our families’ health.

Reducing the threat from nuclear weapons

Less than three months after taking office, President Obama gave a stirring speech in Prague on reducing the threat from nuclear weapons. Sensibly, he sought to “put an end to Cold War thinking” and to “reduce the role that nuclear weapons play in U.S. security policy.” He set forth a bold goal by declaring “I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” Almost seven years later, there has been far less progress toward those goals than many—presumably including the president—had hoped. Some of that is due to Russian intransigence and misbehavior, but despite those challenges, President Obama still has time and the authority to take steps that would reduce the nuclear threat.

By reducing the nuclear threat, each of these steps would lead to a significant improvement in U.S. and global security.

Making full use of the bully pulpit

President Obama can take a measure of satisfaction from the difference he and his administration have made on issues such as these that are of such vital importance to the future of all Americans. But there is clearly more work to be done, and the president has made clear he will use every remaining minute of his time in office to make more progress wherever he can.

Part of his focus over the next year—and beyond—should be on continuing to raise public awareness of the benefits of responsible government action on climate change, clean energy, public health and safety protections, arms control, and other critical issues. This will not only build support for the actions he takes as president, but will help create positive pressure for continued constructive action after he leaves the Oval Office next January.

]]>https://blog.ucsusa.org/alden-meyer/president-obamas-final-state-of-the-union/feed0A Historic Climate Change Agreement is Reached in Parishttps://blog.ucsusa.org/alden-meyer/a-historic-climate-change-agreement-is-reached-in-paris
https://blog.ucsusa.org/alden-meyer/a-historic-climate-change-agreement-is-reached-in-paris#commentsMon, 14 Dec 2015 14:47:42 +0000http://blog.ucsusa.org/?p=40680At 7:26 PM on Saturday night Paris time, a historic climate agreement was reached at the Le Bourget conference center, where negotiations have been taking place over the last two weeks at the 21st meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)—otherwise known as COP 21.

There was drama right up to the last minute, as a drafting error by the UNFCCC Secretariat staff that would have made the Agreement’s emission reduction commitments legally binding—thus requiring ratification of the Agreement by the United States Senate—almost derailed the negotiations. But a technical correction was read from the podium, and France’s Foreign Minister and COP 21 President Laurent Fabius quickly gaveled through the agreement. Following its adoption, there were a series of powerful statements by Minister Fabius, French President Francois Hollande, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres.

The Paris Agreement represents a triumph of multilateral diplomacy, and a powerful indication that 23 years after adoption of the Framework Convention in Rio de Janeiro, the nations of the world are coming together to respond to the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. Having been involved in the climate negotiation process since it started in early 1991, last night’s decision was tremendously gratifying on a personal level; for almost an hour after the gavel came down, I found myself exchanging hugs and hearty handshakes with dozens of colleagues—fellow non-governmental group advocates, negotiators, and even the odd minister or two.

It was a very emotional moment.

Renewed Hope and More Work Ahead

While there is much more work ahead of us, the Paris Agreement gives the world renewed hope that we can come to grips with the mounting climate change crisis and leave our children and grandchildren with a habitable planet. The Agreement sets an even more aggressive temperature limitation goal than the 2 degrees Celsius goal set at COP 16 in Cancun five years ago: “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels.” Getting the 1.5 degrees C reference in the Agreement represents a major victory for small island states and other countries who have been correctly making the case that a 2 degrees C limit is by no means “safe,” and for some island states, in fact poses an existential threat. Of course, we are nowhere near on track to constrain temperature increases to below 2 degrees C, much less to avoid exceeding 1.5 degrees C, and achieving such a goal will be quite challenging.

The Agreement outlines what must be done to meet this aggressive temperature goal, saying countries must “aim to reach global peaking of global warming emissions as soon as possible, recognizing that peaking will take longer for developing country Parties, and to undertake rapid reductions thereafter in accordance with best available science, so as to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century.” As the latest UNEP Emissions Gap report makes clear, such an objective likely requires achieving net zero emissions of the principal greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, by 2070 or so to have a likely chance of keeping temperature increases below 2 degrees C, and even earlier — around 2050 — for a 1.5 degree C goal.

Either of these scenarios will clearly require much more ambitious action than is represented by the post-2020 emissions limitation proposals (referred to as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, or INDCs) put forward by 189 countries thus far, as noted in paragraph 17 of the Paris decision. The COP requested that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change prepare a special report on these issues by 2018, to inform a “facilitative dialogue” amongst countries at COP 24 at the end of that year. The aim of that dialogue is to “take stock of the collective efforts of Parties in relation to progress towards the long-term goal…and to inform the preparation of nationally determined contributions.” The decision also requests all countries to formally submit their contributions by 2020, to be recorded in a registry maintained by the UNFCCC Secretariat.

The IPCC special report, 2018 facilitative dialogue, and 2020 INDC submission deadline will combine to create a global moment at the end of this decade where countries will be expected to update their current proposed actions, in light of the science as well as technology and economic trends. The cost of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies has been coming down at a breathtaking pace; to give just one example, when I met with a team of senior negotiators from India at COP 21 last week, they told me that the price of super-efficient LED light bulbs in their country had been reduced from the equivalent of $5 each to a little over $1 each in just the last 17 months. As these trends continue over the next several years, all countries should be in a position to significantly increase the ambition of their post-2020 emissions proposals, thus helping close the “ambition gap” — the difference between the collective level of emissions expected between now if countries implement the proposals they have put forward, and the much higher level of reductions needed to get on a pathway to hold temperatures below 2 degrees/1.5 degrees C.

Clear and Powerful Message to Fossil Fuel Industry

The Paris Agreement sends a clear and powerful message to the fossil fuel industry: after decades of deception and denial, their efforts to block action on climate change are no longer working. Growing public concern about climate impacts, and the availability of cost-effective efficiency and renewable energy solutions are giving leaders the political will to stand up to fossil fuel polluters and to put us on a path to create the global clean energy economy needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

But even if we succeed in holding the increase in global temperature well below 2 degrees Celsius, the impacts of climate change will continue to increase over the next several decades, as a result of global warming emissions over the last two centuries. Vulnerable countries require scaled-up assistance to cope with these impacts, which they had almost no responsibility for creating. While some progress was made on this front in Paris, much more remains to be done, and ramping up developed country public finance for both adaptation activities and responses to loss and damage — the costs of dealing with both sudden disasters like typhoons and floods, and slow-onset impacts like sea-level rise and droughts — must be a priority going forward. These issues need to be a major focus of the next Conference of the Parties meeting, to be held next November in Marrakech, Morocco.

Finally, let me express my thanks to the tremendous UCS team that worked so hard here in Paris —staff members Ashley Siefert, Doug Boucher, Jason Funk, Kathy Mulvey, Ken Kimmell, Peter Frumhoff, and Rachel Cleetus, as well as to our board chair, Anne Kapuscinski and our special delegation member, Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe. Thanks also to so many other UCS staff who weren’t here in Paris, but whose skillful analysis, advocacy, outreach, and public communications work helped contribute to this historic outcome in Paris. While we are by no means finished, I am convinced that years from now, Paris will be seen as the tipping point when the transition away from fossil fuels really picked up pace and the dawn of the age of renewables became inevitable. I am so grateful to be part of this amazing team of smart, savvy, and dedicated people.

]]>https://blog.ucsusa.org/alden-meyer/a-historic-climate-change-agreement-is-reached-in-paris/feed3Pope Francis and the Paris Opportunityhttps://blog.ucsusa.org/alden-meyer/pope-francis-and-the-paris-opportunity-891
https://blog.ucsusa.org/alden-meyer/pope-francis-and-the-paris-opportunity-891#respondWed, 23 Sep 2015 21:59:50 +0000http://blog.ucsusa.org/?p=38769As I write this, Washington DC is in a state of excitement at the first visit by Pope Francis to the United States. For those concerned about the mounting threat of climate change, there is great anticipation about what the Pope will say on this issue when he addresses a joint session of Congress tomorrow, and when he speaks before the United Nations General Assembly on Friday.

The papal encyclical that Pope Francis released in May, Laudato Si, left no doubt as to how deeply he cares about the impacts that climate change is already having, particularly on the most vulnerable amongst us. And he reiterated that concern in his remarks at this morning’s welcoming ceremony at the White House, saying that “climate change is a problem that can no longer be left to a future generation. When it comes to the care of our common home, we are living at a critical moment of history.”

Tomorrow morning, tens of thousands of people are expected to pack the National Mall for the rally for Moral Action on Climate Justice, organized by a coalition of faith, social justice, secular and environmental leaders; the goal is to “bring more people into the conversation that Climate Change is a Moral Issue and significantly expand the number of persons who will recognize and take action for climate justice.” I will be speaking at the rally on behalf of the Union of Concerned Scientists; here is some of what I plan to say:

Climate change is not just an environmental problem; it is also one of the greatest social, economic, and moral challenges of our time. No country is immune from its impacts, and no country can meet the challenge alone. We can’t point fingers and say “your end of the lifeboat is sinking;” rather, we must put aside our differences and come together to address this crisis. As the world’s largest economy and largest historical emitter of heat-trapping gases, the United States has a special responsibility to provide leadership.

The climate summit in Paris this December offers us the opportunity to meet this challenge, by taking the actions needed to avert the worst impacts of climate change. We need an ambitious agreement that sees all countries committing to do their part, and that sets us on a clear course towards a global economy that is much more energy-efficient and is entirely powered by the sun, wind, and other renewable resources. We must do this in a way that also addresses the crises of economic inequality, poverty, and social exclusion. At the same time, we must greatly expand support for communities that are already struggling to cope with the impacts of climate change, both in other countries and here at home.

Two months out, there are promising signs that such an agreement is possible. Hundreds of cities, states, and provinces are making bold action commitments. Investors are starting to shift their assets away from fossil fuels and into clean energy sources. People around the world are taking steps to reduce the impacts of their own consumption patterns, and are coming out to rallies like this one to demand action from their political leaders. And leaders are responding by committing to work for a successful outcome in Paris.

Of course, there are some politicians who still don’t get it, who say that action is too expensive, that other countries won’t join us if we take action, or in some cases, that the threat of climate change is a hoax. One Member of Congress even told a reporter that when the Pope addresses Congress tomorrow, he hopes that he “emphasizes moral issues, rather than things like global warming.” Anybody who doesn’t understand that climate change is one of the most profound moral issues we face hasn’t been paying any attention to what Pope Francis has been saying!

We can hope that these advocates of inaction will open their hearts to Pope Francis’s message, will reflect on the kind of world they want to leave to their children and grandchildren, and will change their position. But in the meantime, the rest of us must push ahead to win the change we need to see, both in Paris and here at home. By your presence here today, you are sending a strong message to our political leaders that the science is clear, the problem is urgent, the solutions are available, and inaction is unacceptable. Riffing off of President Obama, we are saying: Yes We Can! Yes We Must! Yes We Will!

]]>https://blog.ucsusa.org/alden-meyer/pope-francis-and-the-paris-opportunity-891/feed0President Obama’s State of the Union: What to Expect, and What to Hope Forhttps://blog.ucsusa.org/alden-meyer/president-obamas-state-of-the-union-what-to-expect-786
https://blog.ucsusa.org/alden-meyer/president-obamas-state-of-the-union-what-to-expect-786#commentsFri, 16 Jan 2015 20:04:10 +0000http://blog.ucsusa.org/?p=34058In his State of the Union speech next Tuesday night, President Obama is expected to focus heavily on challenges like economic inequality and international terrorism. But he is also likely to address at least some of the issues that UCS works on directly, such as climate change and energy. Here’s a quick take on what he may say on these issues, as well as some things he should say, but probably won’t.

Photo: Amanda Lucidon

Moving ahead on climate change

In last year’s State of the Union, the president dismissed those who question the reality of the climate threat. “The debate is settled,” he said. “Climate change is a fact. And when our children’s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say yes, we did.” Since then, the president and his team have been moving full steam ahead on his Climate Action Plan, with the latest element, on methane emissions in the oil and gas sector, unveiled earlier this week. The centerpiece of the plan, though, remains the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed standards on the amount of carbon pollution that the nation’s power plants are allowed to dump into the air, which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he will do “any and everything I can to block.” Expect the president to reiterate the economic, environmental, and security benefits of his domestic climate initiatives; while he won’t persuade Sen. McConnell or other Congressional opponents to change their stance, he knows that the public — including a majority of Republicans — support regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

President Obama is also likely to underscore the need for U.S. leadership on climate on the global stage, building on his forceful speech at last September’s climate summit at the United Nations, and his joint announcement with Chinese President Xi Jinping in November, where China committed to cap its total carbon emissions by 2030, if not earlier. It will take global collaboration on an unprecedented level for humanity to come to grips with the climate crisis, and as the president has acknowledged, “as the world’s largest economy and second-largest carbon emitter, as a country with unsurpassed ability to drive innovation and scientific breakthroughs, as the country that people around the world continue to look to in times of crisis, we’ve got a vital role to play.”

Finally, climate-related impacts — including tidal flooding linked to sea level rise, forest die-back, wildfires, heatwaves, drought, health effects, and threats to iconic landmarks and to our electricity system — are increasingly affecting local communities across the country. Mayors, governors, and other local leaders are on the front lines of the real-world fight to avert the worst impacts of climate change; several of them served on President Obama’s Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience, which presented its recommendations to the president last November. President Obama will likely refer to these impacts in his speech, and he should call on Congress to join him in ramping up federal assistance to state and local governments to prepare for and cope with the the consequences of climate change.

Clean vehicles and fuels: good progress, and more to come

The increasing fuel efficiency of our vehicle fleet is a major contributor to recent reductions in oil and gasoline prices; the president was part of a bipartisan group of Senators who helped pass historic legislation in 2007 that increased the federal corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards for light-duty vehicles for the first time in 20 years, and he built on that success during his first term as president. In last year’s State of the Union address, the president committed to keep working to improve vehicle efficiency: “When we rescued our automakers,’ he said, “we worked with them to set higher fuel efficiency standards for our cars. In the coming months, I’ll build on that success by setting new standards for our trucks, so we can keep driving down oil imports and what we pay at the pump.” Those standards are expected out in March, and will be another major component of the comprehensive strategy that’s needed to cut our oil use in half through efficiency and innovation. By taking additional steps to cut oil use, we can reduce the problems oil causes our economy, our security, our environment and our climate.

Grounds for caution on natural gas

As he did last year, President Obama may refer to the nation’s expanding production and use of natural gas as a benefit to our economy and environment. It’s true that substituting natural gas for coal in electricity production can help reduce carbon pollution in the near-term, though we must make sure that fugitive methane emissions from gas production and use don’t overwhelm these carbon benefits. But ultimately, we need to virtually eliminate carbon pollution from all sources — including natural gas — if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. An overreliance on natural gas over the long-term won’t allow us to achieve the emissions reductions needed to address global warming, and could crowd out essential investments in renewable energy sources and improving energy efficiency. Also, when it comes to expanded oil and gas production, the federal government needs to take a much stronger role in protecting communities, and work with states to strengthen regulation and oversight of these industries. As UCS’s toolkit on fracking makes clear, too many communities are being pressed to make decisions on new production projects without access to comprehensive and reliable scientific information about the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on their local air and water quality, community health, safety, economy, environment, and overall quality of life.

Protecting the government’s ability to protect us through science-based regulations

The new Congress is wasting no time in resuscitating bad ideas on “reforming” the federal regulatory process. While the White House issued a veto threat to the Regulatory Accountability Act passed by the House earlier this week, this is only the first in a likely onslaught of such bills. The president should make it crystal clear next Tuesday night that he will stand up to these efforts of special interests and their allies in Congress to undermine the ability of the federal government to protect the public health and safety.

Not so fast on trade deals

The President is almost certain to mention the trade pacts now being negotiated with the European Union and with a set of key Asian countries, and may call on Congress to give him “fast track” authority to require only an up-or-down vote when he submits those agreements for approval. But there are mounting concerns amongst both public interest groups and members of Congress about the substance of these new agreements, as well as the lack of transparency in the negotiating process. It is crucial that these and other trade agreements are crafted to protect public health and safety and the environment, with standards based on the best available science. And these agreements must be negotiated in the sunlight, permitting the American public and law makers access to their details before they are concluded.

Needed: a National Food Policy

While the president is likely to once again refer to First Lady Michelle Obama’s campaign against childhood obesity, it’s unlikely he will address the disconnect between health and nutrition policies, on the one hand, and our national agricultural policy on the other. As UCS Food and Environment program director Ricardo Salvador and three colleagues put it in a recent Washington Post op-ed, “how we produce and consume food has a bigger impact on Americans’ well-being than any other human activity. The food industry is the largest sector of our economy; food touches everything from our health to the environment, climate change, economic inequality and the federal budget. Yet we have no food policy — no plan or agreed-upon principles — for managing American agriculture or the food system as a whole.” Pursuing such a shift in food and farm policies would require taking on some real sacred cows (pun intended), and given the president’s need to defend his environmental, health care, immigration, and financial reform accomplishments, it’s understandable, though unfortunate, that he will likely leave this issue to the next president to take on.

Increasing the safety of nuclear weapons

Less than three months after taking office, President Obama gave a stirring speech in Prague, where he said “I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” And in last year’s State of the Union address, he observed that “American diplomacy has rallied more than 50 countries to prevent nuclear materials from falling into the wrong hands, and allowed us to reduce our own reliance on Cold War stockpiles.” Locking down nuclear materials is an important achievement that UCS fully supports, but there are other steps the president can and should take to protect Americans, such as taking our missiles off dangerous high alert levels. This would also be a good signal to countries that are looking for signs that the U.S. and other nuclear weapons states are committed to reducing the nuclear threat, prior to the Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference this spring. The State of the Union address presents a great opportunity for President Obama to signal such an initiative, though there are no indications that he intends to do so.

]]>https://blog.ucsusa.org/alden-meyer/president-obamas-state-of-the-union-what-to-expect-786/feed2Confronting the Elephant in the Room: Differentiation of Obligations in the Paris Climate Agreementhttps://blog.ucsusa.org/alden-meyer/confronting-the-elephant-in-the-room-differentiation-of-obligations-in-the-paris-climate-agreement-775
https://blog.ucsusa.org/alden-meyer/confronting-the-elephant-in-the-room-differentiation-of-obligations-in-the-paris-climate-agreement-775#respondFri, 19 Dec 2014 19:41:46 +0000http://blog.ucsusa.org/?p=33855Coming into the Lima climate negotiations on December 1st, the US-China joint climate announcement, the European Union’s political agreement on its 2030 emissions reduction target, and the successful capitalization of the Green Climate Fund had all combined to create a sense of momentum and a positive mood.

But these developments had done little to resolve the sharp disagreements about which countries are responsible for taking which kinds of action on climate change, and these different perspectives on the issue of differentiation nearly derailed the final decision in Lima. As it was, the Lima decision on the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) was a disappointing, minimal outcome. If these conflicts over the issue of differentiation are not resolved, or at least significantly narrowed, they could threaten the prospects for agreement in Paris next December on a new, comprehensive post-2020 climate regime.

Some background…

In the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change, countries were split into two groups; the developed countries who collectively were responsible for the majority of historical greenhouse gas emissions were placed in Annex 1 of the treaty, and the developing countries were labeled as non-Annex 1. Under the Kyoto Protocol, only Annex 1 countries were required to take on binding emissions reduction commitments.

At COP 17 in Durban in 2011, countries agreed that the post-2020 actions to be negotiated by next year’s climate summit in Paris would be “applicable to all.” To the U.S., other developed countries, and some developing countries as well, this phrase meant that the strict “firewall” between Annex 1 and non-Annex 1 countries would not continue in the post-2020 agreement; different countries would take on different kinds of actions, but those would be based on their capabilities and their current national circumstances, not by the binary division of the world in the 1992 Framework Convention. However, other countries, in particular the Like-Minded Developing Countries group continue to insist that obligations in the post-2020 agreement must be based on the Annex 1 and non-Annex 1 groupings.

At the COP 19 climate summit last year in Warsaw, countries agreed that the obligations under the post-2020 agreement would be “nationally-determined,” with each country deciding for itself what kinds of actions it would take to reduce emissions. While there is general agreement that developed countries should continue to take on economy-wide emissions reduction commitments, there is no guidance in the Warsaw decision as to what kinds of obligations developing countries should take on, nor could there have been, given the deep divisions on this issue.

In the November 12th U.S. China Joint Announcement on Climate Change, China pledged to achieve an economy-wide peak in its carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 or earlier. While this represents a significant advance in China’s national position over its previous intensity-based approach, it had no effect on its international stance in Lima on the post-2020 agreement, nor on the positioning of the Like-Minded Developing Countries group, of which China is a leading member. These countries continue to insist that developing countries should only take actions based on provision of finance and technology support from developed countries (which, of course, is not a condition of China’s pledged post-2020 emissions cap).

In Lima, these disputes about the responsibility of different countries arose not only in the discussions of post-2020 mitigation actions, but also in debates over finance, adaptation, and technology transfer.

In the final decision text put forward by COP President Manuel Pulgar-Vidal and adopted by consensus in the wee hours of Sunday morning, a new paragraph appeared: “Underscores its commitment to reaching an ambitious agreement in 2015 that reflects the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in light of different national circumstances.” This language was taken directly from the U.S.-China announcement, and was enough to paper over the clear differences on the differentiation issue and to allow unanimous adoption of the decision.

Differing approaches on differentiation

In their written submissions earlier this year, countries spelled out their approaches to several issues, including the issue of differentiation in the post-2020 agreement. While these positions reflect the well-known divisions between the developed countries and the Like-Minded Developing Country group, there are several proposals from other developing countries that provide a more nuanced view of the issue and represent a potential landing ground for the agreement next year in Paris.

In its submission, the European Union notes that one of the most challenging aspects of negotiating the post-2020 agreement in Paris will be how it reflects the Framework Convention’s principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR&RC). The EU believes that “to be consistent with this principle, Parties’ obligations must reflect evolving realities, circumstances, responsibilities and capabilities in a fair and dynamic way that is ambitious enough to keep us on track to achieve the below 2 degrees C objective.” The EU sees the process of countries submitting their Intended Nationally-Determined Contributions, or INDCs, together with the international process to consider and analyze them, as the way that CBDR&RC will be operationalized in the post-2020 agreement.

The U.S. also believes that differentiation will be determined by the INDCs put forward next year. The U.S. is quite clear that it cannot support a post-2020 agreement “based on a 1992-era bifurcated approach,” unless that approach “were on the basis of categories that are updated, in line with evolving realities.”

Norway calls for all countries to participate in the post-2020 regime, and sees a need to “differentiate according to the actual differences among Parties, and not on the basis of fixed categories of Parties.” Norway says that it “would expect all Parties with reasonable capacity and significant responsibility for global emissions” to put forward economy-wide emission reduction or emission limitation commitments.

Taking a directly counter approach, the Like-Minded Developing Countries group has called for the post-2015 agreement to be strictly differentiated between Annex 1 and non-Annex 1 countries, with the former taking on “economy-wide mitigation commitments” and the latter taking “mitigation actions subject to provision of support” from developed countries. China, which is a leading member of the LMDC, is quite firm in its belief that the goal of the negotiations on the new post-2020 agreement is “by no means to create a new international climate regime, nor to renegotiate, replace, restructure, rewrite, or reinterpret the Convention and its principles, provisions, and Annexes.”

Brazil, on the other hand, has proposed an approach it calls “concentric differentiation,” that would see all countries putting forward “quantified mitigation targets and actions.” These could include economy-wide reduction targets relative to a previous base year, relative to a future projection of emissions, relative to unit of GDP (intensity target), or on a per capita basis, or actions that aren’t economy-wide. Developed countries would be expected to take the first approach, while least-developed countries would be encouraged to put forward non-economy wide actions. Other developing countries would be expected to put forward “economy-wide mitigation targets, leading to absolute targets over time, in accordance with their national circumstances, development levels, and capabilities.” Brazil’s proposal is summarized in this graphic:

Brazil sees this approach as fully consistent with the principles of the Convention, including differentiation between developed and developing countries. But to me, it represents a much more dynamic and effective approach to increasing ambition than the Annex 1/non-Annex 1 division of responsibilities that some countries state should be maintained ad infinitum.

In its submission, Mexico calls for developed countries to take the lead by putting forward economy-wide emission reduction targets, and for “other Parties in a position to do so” to follow their lead by doing the same. Similar to Brazil, Mexico envisions a spectrum of other possible commitments, including absolute limits on emissions, intensity targets, deviation from business-as-usual, and sectoral mitigation plans and strategies.

The Association of Independent Latin American and Caribbean countries (AILAC) states that while developed countries must take the lead, all countries should put forward contributions under the post-2020 agreement, based on their “national context, capabilities, responsibility and challenges,” and all countries should be “ambitious in contributing to global efforts to combat climate change.”

Finally, the Least-Developed Countries also call for developed countries and others in a position to do so to take on economy-wide emission reduction commitments, and for other countries to take on emission limitation commitments “in a form that is appropriate to meet their national circumstances.” They call on themselves to develop and implement low-carbon development strategies.

The way forward

The differentiation issue nearly blocked the final decision in Lima, where the stakes were actually quite small. In Paris next year, the stakes will be quite high: nothing less than the shape of the climate regime for the next several decades. It will not be possible to paper over sharp differences on this issue with artful language that different groupings can interpret in a way favorable to their position, as happened in the last hours of Lima.

Given the opposition of developed countries and of many developing countries to maintaining the Annex 1/non-Annex 1 groupings as the basis for obligations in the post-2020 agreement, it is clear that the position of the Like-Minded Developing Countries group is not viable. But the notion of purely self-determined obligations is not appealing to the vast majority of countries either; while it may represent the de facto basis for the first round of commitments under the Paris agreement, there will need to be more guidance in the agreement for subsequent mitigation commitments, as well as for the provision of finance, capacity-building, and technology transfer to developing countries, if it is to be acceptable to all. The submissions from Brazil, AILAC, Mexico, the Least-Developed Countries and others have much to offer in this regard.

Given that these submissions were made only recently, they have not received full discussion in the negotiating process. Creating the space for a full and focused discussion of the differentiation issue should be a priority for the new ADP co-chairs, Dan Reifsnyder of the United States and Ahmed Djoghlaf of Algeria. For as more than one delegate observed in Lima, differentiation is “the elephant in the room.” To make real progress towards agreement in Paris, there will need to be greater alignment around a shared vision of post-2020 differentiation. My hope is that through constructive discussion of the proposals put forward recently, together with the reality of differentiated INDCs being put forward by countries starting next March, we will start to see some breaking down of the polarization around the differentiation issue. Whether it will be enough to enable us to reach a comprehensive, ambitious post-2020 climate agreement in Paris remains to be seen — but it is an effort well worth making.